


Were We Awake

by chuusei_teki_na_koe



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Blood, Blood Loss, Hand Jobs, Illusions, M/M, Manipulation, Mind Control, Poetry, Post-DMC1, References to Torture, Sibling Incest, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:28:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28168494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chuusei_teki_na_koe/pseuds/chuusei_teki_na_koe
Summary: Trapped in the depths of hell in an illusory dimension, a man with no name desperately tries to remember who he is.
Relationships: Dante/Vergil (Devil May Cry), demonic mob/Vergil
Comments: 7
Kudos: 42





	Were We Awake

**Author's Note:**

> I just wanna see Vergil suffer lots... *clenches fist*

When he woke up, he wasn't sure where he was.

It was dark, and his vision was blurry for some reason. He didn't have a full sense of his body—the place where he assumed his hand would be turned out to be thin air, and he was blurring into his surroundings.

What time was it?

What day was it?

What year was it?

“Wake up. Wake up, V—” He didn't quite catch the rest of what was being said to him.

Someone was shaking him gently, in a soft grip. He opened his eyes _(weren't they already open?)_ and saw it was his mother, smiling gently.

“Were you having a bad dream?” she said. “You were screaming.” She sat on the edge of his bed, looking down at him.

He sat up in bed, pressing a hand to his forehead. “...I think so,” he said, and his voice came out sounding like a child's. ...Was that odd, though? He was a child.

“Why don't you tell me about it?”

He pressed a finger between his eyes. He liked talking about dreams, didn't he?

“What was it you said before? That dreams are just playing?”

Oh, he remembered that one.

_We dream—it is good we are dreaming—  
It would hurt us—were we awake—  
But since it is playing—_

How did the rest go, again?

“I dreamed I was being chased,” he said. “I always dream I'm being chased. By a bird, and a great cat, and a golem. And then when they caught me—”

_The golem crushed his torso under its weight, pressing him until he felt his bones crunch, his flesh ooze sideways. He grasped desperately for his demonic power, but the well was drained dry, he'd long since scraped the bottom. He tried to kick, but his legs were impaled with the cat's spikes, soaked with his own blood. They weren't even trying to kill him. They were trying to break him. And all the while, the bird just kept talking and talking, he screamed just to drown out that fucking creature's voice—_

“Sometimes,” his mother said, “When you have the same dream over and over again, it means something. It's a message from the bottom of your heart, trying to tell you something.”

“Like what?”

“Like,” she said slowly, “That deep in your heart, you believe you deserve it.”

His mind couldn't process what she'd said at first. His head felt fuzzy, like he was still half-asleep. “What?”

There was still that soft smile on her face as she continued. “Your mind is showing you that dream to give you an opportunity to try again. To fight them again, and win. If you were stronger, you wouldn't have had to suffer this. If you keep failing, you have no one to blame but yourself.”

His mind went from fuzzy to crisp in a matter of seconds. It was like waking up from a long sleep, dragging yourself to consciousness.

“You're not her,” he said with a growl, and his voice sounded different. He shoved the creature away from himself, and now he knew where his hands were, he could feel his body. He was too large for this bed.

She fell to the floor in a heap, and when she hit the floor, she started laughing, her face twisted in an inhuman expression his real mother never would have worn. “Poor boy! How many times is it now that you've fallen for this? Every single time!”

He didn't think. Surging off the bed, he raised one boot and slammed it on her neck, snapping it instantly. The demon shrieked, but her cry quickly turned to gurgles and then silence.

He remembered the rest of the poem.

_But since it is playing—kill us,  
And we are playing—shriek..._

The corpse still had his mother's face. He decided not to look at it.

The man shook his head, trying to clear it. He was trapped and he had to get out, but he couldn't remember enough to figure out how he was supposed to get out. He couldn't even remember his own name. He knew it was a demon doing this—who had been doing this for quite some time. That demon was showing him illusions, trying to get into his head.

Mundus. That was a name the man did remember. The name was large, an overwhelming presence in his mind, taking up so much space, it was hard to think about anything else. Just thinking the word made him dizzy. He decided to avoid the name.

That demon, the one whose name made him dizzy, was the one doing this. The man knew he was too valuable to kill, too powerful to be tossed away like that—so that demon wanted to make use of him. He'd broken free after the first time, he'd started to remember himself, so that demon had resorted to this.

Stepping away from the body, he inspected his hands, arms, legs. He felt like they were all his own, but he knew he wasn't entirely free of that demon's control. He'd been that demon's puppet, before, and his body had been repurposed, remade. It still didn't quite look like his own—his skin was a different tone, his fingers pointed like demon claws, but not the familiar ones, different ones. At odd moments, his body would feel like it wasn't his own.

The man squeezed his hands into fists, relaxed them. Tried to feel the presence of every limb. His body was all there, even if it was a little off from what he remembered it as.

Looking around the room—modeled after his childhood bedroom—he scowled. He was in some kind of pocket dimension, and there was usually a trick to getting out of these places—

He was yanked out of his thoughts by the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs behind him, and when he spun around, he saw a familiar face, even more familiar than his own. Narrowed eyes, lips showing a hint of teeth, white hair—

“Dante,” his mouth said before his mind could even catch up. He couldn't remember his own name, but he could remember that one. He could remember it _too_ well. “What are you doing here?”

The fake Dante was standing there in silent horror, staring down at the body on the ground.

The man was immediately kicked in the gut with hot rage—Dante was going to make this _his_ fault? _He_ was the one who had fucked off on every single responsibility, been coddled, spoiled and protected, always demanding to be the center of attention, when _he'd_ thrown away his name so easily—when had Dante ever tried to _help_ him?

It all hit him too fast, a stream of incoherent rage and scattered thoughts, and it was a long moment before his brain could catch up and realize he was being a fool. This wasn't actually Dante. It was another illusion, a demon dressed up as a figure from his memories, nothing more. The man's lip curled in disgust.

He reached for his sword—and grasped at nothing. He didn't have one. Then he'd have to rely on his bare hands.

“I'm here to kill you,” the fake Dante said, something so bland and unimaginative, it could only have come from a demon.

But before the illusory version of his brother could finish talking, the man shot forward, clawed hand reaching for the demon's throat. The demon drew its sword, slashing the man's hand away with a leap backward, and they fought.

If this had actually been their childhood house, they would have destroyed everything in the room, but this wasn't actually that place. The room mysteriously maintained its shape, the bed and bookshelves and desk never shattering, no matter how many times they got slammed or slashed.

The demon was—too fast. Could they make an illusory replica this close to the real Dante, was that even possible?

No. It wasn't that the illusion was too fast. It was that the man was too slow. His body wasn't responding like it should, and he couldn't think straight, just reacting on instinct to everything instead of moving tactically. He was bone-deep exhausted, as if he'd gone through a thousand fights already.

It wasn't until the fake Dante slammed him into the wall and he just slid down it weakly, unable to recover, that he remembered he'd already gone through a thousand fights. Or something like that, he hadn't counted. Too many. Long past the point of pleasure. Usually he'd enjoy fighting even a fake Dante, but now, he just wanted to lie down and rest, and sleep for a long, long time _(without nightmares, please no more nightmares—)_ and wake up to fight another day. He already felt himself close to blacking out, and his body wanted to give in.

Hands roughly grabbed at his collar, yanked him up again. “There's no coming back from what you've done,” Dante's voice sounded in his ear.

“If you think I would ever fall for your transparent little scenario, you're even more foolish than I thought,” the man snarled through cracked, bleeding lips. “Do you seriously think I'm that addled?”

The fake Dante yanked him forward, then slammed him back into the wall again. The surface looked like wood, but it felt hard and cold as stone. Either way, it was now wet with blood.

The fake Dante grinned at him, cocky and mean. “It doesn't matter if you know this is fake. I'm here because you want me here. This is all just coming out of your head.”

The man didn't believe that for a second. He knew these demons would spout lies and truth in equal measure, in attempt to get what they wanted out of you.

“If you want to break out of this,” the fake Dante said, drawing the man away from the wall by his shoulders before scooping him up to carry him to the bed, “all you gotta do is wish with all your heart for it to stop. You know that already.”

The man struggled, but his body could barely move anymore, and all that happened was that he was unceremoniously dumped on the bed.

“That's not it,” the man muttered to himself. “It was something else, I have to remember something else—”

But that train of thought was interrupted by a creak of springs as the fake Dante sat on the side of the bed and reached out to grab him by the chin. “Damn, you're looking ugly these days,” the fake said with an irritating smirk. “I'd say the demonic plastic surgeon ripped you off.”

“Shut up,” the man growled, trying to push himself off the bed, but his arms trembled, and he fell back again, and just about blacked out in the process. He was shredded all over, and he could already feel blood soaking the sheets underneath him. But the fake Dante was just looking down at him like nothing was wrong, and he'd just rolled out of bed. It was jarring.

“Why? You find all my witty jabs charming.” The fake Dante's grip was firm on his chin, a coarse thumb reaching up to stroke his lower lip.

Even knowing he shouldn't reply, he shouldn't play into this, the words always just fell out of his mouth around Dante, he couldn't help but rise to the bait. “You're the only one who thinks you're witty.”

“Hey, I know several demons who appreciated my humor. ...They're just all dead, now.” Dante's thumb rubbed back and forth on his lip before tugging his jaw down and sliding into his mouth, over his tongue.

He immediately bit, drawing blood, but that just made the fake Dante smile. “Ohh, now you're getting flirty.”

He spat out the thumb with a spray of blood—half of it his own—but the fake just laughed and got a better grip on him, grabbing his hair in one hand as the bloody thumb was forced into his mouth again. “If you stop wanting this, the illusion will break,” the fake teased him. “You wanted to fight me, so we fought. And next...”

The bed creaked as the fake Dante's weight shifted on the bed and he leaned down at the man, giving him the sort of mocking grin that Dante excelled at. “Does baby want a cuddle?”

One of the man's bloodied arms shot up to clasp at the fake's neck, but his arm was leaden and his grip was weak and useless.

“I know you like it kinky,” said the fake with a grin, casually swatting off his hand. He removed his thumb from the man's mouth, then he lay himself down on the bed beside him, coat and boots and all, heedless of the blood spreading around them. “But you seem kinda tired. Let's just have a nap.” And then he pulled the man against him, nuzzling his face into the back of his neck.

“Get away from me, you filth,” the man choked out, straining against the warm, powerful arm clasped around his middle. He coughed, and it came up wet. It was probably blood, but he barely had the strength to open his eyes and see. His sense of his body was deteriorating again—he wasn't sure if he was cold or hot, from blood loss or a fever, but the fake's arm around his chest was burning, he had to get it off. He tried to push back against it, but all his strength was leaking into the sheets.

Dante's breath came hot against his ear. “You lost, so you're my bitch, now.”

And then a rough hand snaked over the man's thigh, slipping through a sword slash in his trousers to his crotch, clasping his semi-erect cock. “Damn, I'm surprised you have enough blood left to get hard. You must be _damn_ horny for me. Is someone a little repressed?”

The man reached down to grab Dante's wrist, digging at the pressure point there with his claws, but it was like the fake didn't even feel it. His hand just moved slowly up and down the man's cock, his blood-slicked grip gentle.

The man bit his lip, digging his claws into Dante's wrist, but Dante just chuckled, low and so close the man could feel it in his back. Dante's arm moved up, his fingers prying open the man's mouth again, forcing him to let out the hot breath he'd been holding in.

“C'mon, don't be shy,” Dante teased. Every word he spoke came with lips ghosted on the back of his neck, as Dante's hand stroked tortuously slow over the man's cock. “You embarrassed 'cause you lost? I won't hold it against you.”

The man wanted to dig harder into Dante's wrist, rip it away, but it defied his will, going slack. It seemed his body still wasn't fully in his control yet, after all. His claws dug into the bed, making a feeble, insincere attempt to pull himself away as his hips twitched up into Dante's grip. His body was washing hot-cold, humiliation in his gut as his choked his own throat silent by force of sheer stubbornness. This wasn't real. This wasn't real. This demon was invading the deepest recesses of his mind, searching for the weakest spots and stabbing at them relentlessly. He had no secrets anymore, no pride. He was too weak, he had no way of escaping—or wait, didn't he? There was something, something he just had to remember, he could have sworn it was—

Dante's grasped him in a tight fist, and the man moaned around the fingers in his mouth, hips pushing into Dante's comforting grip as his cock was milked, the sticky warmth indistinguishable from blood. His body trembled from his orgasm, and then kept shaking, and Dante took him in his arms and just held him, saying nothing. The man clasped the bedsheets, struggling just to breathe, just to stay conscious, and as the momentary pleasure of arousal faded, his body became colder and colder, and Dante's arms around him were the only available warmth.

When the man opened his eyes, Dante was looking down at him. “There's no going back home now,” he murmured, but there was something wrong with his eyes. They seemed bottomless, inhuman. The man focused his vision, stared into them, searching. “But you're still my brother, no matter what.”

He could hardly breathe. At some point, without realizing it, his hands had gone from clasping the sheets to clasping Dante's forearms.

“Dante,” he croaked, and saying the word out loud anchored him to himself. He couldn't remember his own name, but he could remember this one.

He couldn't remember his own name?

That was when he saw it—the three lights in a triangle, lurking in the back of Dante's eyes.

“I'll accept you, if you just submit,” Dante's lips murmured. The fake Dante's lips.

Dante. Dante. _Dante._ He was Dante's brother, and his name was—

With the remaining dregs of energy in his body, he brought up a big glob from his throat and spat in the fake's face.

“Vergil...son of Sparda...will never surrender to _you_.”

His own name burned coming out of his mouth, but once he'd said it, the world shattered around him, and his body jerked as if he were falling, landing on his back on a cold, hard, surface.

He blinked, and when he opened his eyes again, the world around him was dark. He was alone in a small cell of twisted metal. He instinctively got to his feet, and found he could move—he'd been beaten pretty badly, and he was exhausted, but he could move. He looked down at his hands—they were still those off-color, twisted claws, but at least he wasn't bleeding everywhere.

“ _ **Don't be a fool,”**_ rang a loud, overpowering voice in his head. He wasn't sure if it was That Demon, or another one who served him. It didn't really matter. _**“This isn't what you want.”**_

“Don't you fucking talk to me about what I want!” Vergil's palms slammed the bars of his cage, making them rattle and creak, but they didn't break. His voice cracked. He sounded pathetic, desperate. “Get out of my head!”

“ _ **You know you have two options: suffer and die here in the demon world, or serve Mundus. And you've already experienced the second. You liked it. You never wanted your human heart, anyway. Mundus gave you the power you always wanted. And you could have all that, and more.”**_

That name, that _name_ alone rang like a gong in his head, and Vergil cringed to hear it. “If my options are death or slavery, I choose neither,” he spat. He stepped back and slammed the bars with his shoulder this time, putting what meager strength he had left into it, and the bars creaked a little harder, bending away from him. The pocket dimension had been the real prison. This was just the frilly little bow on top.

 _Damn it, that's something_ he _would say,_ Vergil thought, grabbing two of the bars in his hands, and slowly, painfully, he began to pry them apart.

“ _ **Liar, liar, fragile little human liar. And you lie to yourself most of all!”**_ the voice in his mind cackled, and Vergil roared to drown it out, putting the strength of the cry into his arms as he strained, forced the bars apart, and there was a loud crack as the prison bars cracked and split, and as the demonic metal shards rained down, he stepped out of his prison.

Looking down at himself, he found himself in black tattered rags—no, they weren't black, they were just that caked with blood. He focused on his clothing a moment—he'd been able to reconstitute his clothes before, but his memory of what he typically wore was fuzzy and distant. The first thing that came to mind was a red coat, and he knew that wasn't his, but he was too disgusted by the thought of walking around in rags, so he went with that. And in the blink of an eye, he was wearing familiar-looking boots, pants, and a red coat.

Staggering down the dark, narrow corridor of the prison he didn't remember having been put into, he headed for the light of a torch in the distance, as good a landmark as any.

But when he came closer to the light source, he froze.

It hadn't just been his own cell. All the walls, floor and ceiling here were metallic, their surfaces dully reflective, and under the torchlight, he could see himself.

His face was distorted, caught halfway between demon and human, with none of the benefits of either. His gait was off, it was like his body was oddly light. He felt like he should be wearing armor. And seeing himself in this coat he knew was Dante's, he looked nothing short of comical.

Laying both hands against the reflective wall, he stared at the figure there, tried to remember what he was supposed to look like.

“I am V—” It was like the word didn't want to come out of his lips. He couldn't bear to say that name, it was like it was something disgusting. His body was fighting him. Still, still, even _now_ that demon had control of him.

“Dante, Dante, Dante,” he muttered, the one thing he could remember, he could say, and along with the name came a rising tide of nameless anger. He smacked at the wall uselessly and repeated that name like a chant. “I'm going to kill Dante.” The one thing that always made sense, no matter what else was in his head, and he was never going to let this go. Through all the memories, real and false, Dante was always there, always there to fight, always welcomed him with his blade.

“I'm going to kill Dante,” he muttered, and continued to drag himself down the dark, empty hall, the words giving his legs strength. “It's just playing, Dante,” he added, and laughed, high and strained, before fading away, embarrassed by the sound of the voice that didn't even sound like his own. “Just playing...”


End file.
